Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin’s writings in 1858. This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the Wallace Line that divides the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia.

He was considered the 19th century’s leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species and is sometimes called the “father of biogeography”. Wallace was one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th century and made many other contributions to the development of evolutionary theory besides being codiscoverer of natural selection. These included the concept of warning coloration in animals, and the Wallace effect, a hypothesis on how natural selection could contribute to speciation by encouraging the development of barriers against hybridization.

Wallace was strongly attracted to unconventional ideas (such as evolution). His advocacy of spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with some members of the scientific establishment. In addition to his scientific work, he was a social activist who was critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and economic system in 19th-century Britain. His interest in natural history resulted in his being one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity.

In honor of the centennial of his death, this short film celebrates the extraordinary life and lasting scientific contributions of the other, arguably more colorful discoverer of natural selection.

Biologists have found new evidence for why mice, people and other vertebrate animals carry thousands of varieties of genes to make immune-system proteins named MHCs — even though some of those genes make us susceptible to infections and to autoimmune diseases. Findings are published in theFeb 6, 2012 issue of PNAS.

A new technique for animal classification could quell the long-running debate between paleontologists and molecular biologists as to where turtles belong on the evolutionary tree. While some camps have argued that turtles are closer to crocodilians and birds, researchers at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine; Dartmouth College; and Harvard University have published data in Biology Letterssuggesting that turtles are more closely related to tuataras and lizards. The team identified 77 new microRNA families in the Anolis carolinensis lizard genome, four of which are also expressed in Chrysemys picta bellii, the Western painted turtle, leading them to conclude that turtles and lizards have much more in common than previously thought.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2011) — Geologists at Brown University and the University of Washington have a cautionary tale: Lose enough species in the oceans, and the entire ecosystem could collapse. Looking at two of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth’s history, the scientists attribute the ecosystems’ collapse to a loss in the variety of species sharing the same space. It took up to 10 million years after the mass extinctions for the ecosystem to stabilize.

The world’s oceans are under siege. Conservation biologists regularly note the precipitous decline of key species, such as cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish and sharks. Lose enough of these top-line predators (among other species), and the fear is that the oceanic web of life may collapse.

In a new paper in Geology, researchers at Brown University and the University of Washington used a group of marine creatures similar to today’s nautilus to examine the collapse of marine ecosystems that coincided with two of the greatest mass extinctions in the Earth’s history. They attribute the ecosystems’ collapse to a loss of enough species occupying the same space in the oceans, called “ecological redundancy.”